


Apocalypse Now

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 366 [27]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Star Wars - All Media Types, Supernatural
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Apocalypse, Cricket, Disguise, Durham - Freeform, England (Country), F/M, Gay Sex, Johnlock - Freeform, London, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Trains, United States, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:35:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26616805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The Complete Cases Of Sherlock Holmes And John Watson. All 366 cases plus assorted interludes, hiatuses, codas &c.1899. After his near-disaster on Tonbridge Railway Station, Sherlock knows that it will take something really big to put things right with John. So how about the end of the world?
Relationships: Lucifer/OMC, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Elementary 366 [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555741
Kudos: 6





	1. Contents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Warrior_Queen_Rosmarine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warrior_Queen_Rosmarine/gifts), [S_IRIS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_IRIS/gifts).



** 1899 **

**Interlude: For The Man I Love**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Sherlock belatedly realizes the error of his ways_

**Case 288: The Adventure Of The Millennium Falcon**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Can the great detective avert the end of the world?_

**Interlude: Cricket**  
by Master Benjamin Jackson-Giles II  
_An intelligent young boy asks an arguably unintelligent question_

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	2. Interlude: For The Man I Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1899\. Sherlock belatedly realizes that he has made a(nother) mistake over something important – but the (possible) end of the world is about to come to his rescue!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

One of the things that my beloved John often remarked on during his writings was that he considered himself putty in my hands, in that I only had to look at him to get him to do exactly what I wanted. Mostly I did not abuse this Great Power and restricted it only to extremely important things, like bacon. Hardly ever for anything else.

I just _know_ that he is shaking his head at me. All right, I used it for certain other things as well. Not too often.

Still shaking. I do not know why; he enjoyed it when I used it for That!

What very few people seem to have noticed is that I actually had to make a conscious effort to achieve what I wanted when it came to John. He would hardly ever ask me for things and would more often than not keep things from me rather than (as he saw it) bother me, but his silent distraction worked far more effectively than anything I could do, and I would have gone to Timbuctoo and back if it would have brought a smile back onto that beautiful face of his (I always used the word 'handsome' to John, for obvious reasons).

Thus John's sadness after my sheer stupidity and utter recklessness had nearly cost me my life on Tonbridge Railway Station hurt me far more than any words could have done. That I had made the man I loved suffer was something that caused a sharp ache in the pit of my stomach, and I knew that I would have to put in some serious effort to put things right. What I needed was some time away from the constant demands on my time and abilities so I could devote myself to what really mattered. The love of my life.

I was to get my wish – _courtesy of the end of the world!_

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	3. Case 288: The Adventure Of The Millennium Falcon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1899\. The combination of an electric train and an apocalypse conspire to drive Sherlock and John from Baker Street – but their temporary refuge, a mysterious underground bunker at a secret location in the North of England, has its own dangers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned also as the death of Perkins.

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

I cannot but say that the recent dramatic events on a Kentish railway station which had once again so nearly taken Sherlock from he had left me broken inside. I knew that in truth I was behaving like a petulant child – I had no right to expect the man that I loved to live the life of a hermit just to placate me – but seeing him standing there with a gun pointed at him was an image that I awoke screaming to on many a subsequent night, only to realize that the man in it was already holding me and whispering quiet words of reassurance. If it had not been for that unseen passenger opening that carriage door at exactly the right moment, I would have lost him! 

Over the next two months Sherlock took on hardly any new cases, and those few that he did undertake hardly ever involved his leaving Baker Street. When pressed he admitted that his annoying brother Randall had wanted to come round over some matter or other at one point but Sherlock had said that in his current mood he might well shoot first and let their mother know afterwards. I was not sure which of those was the greater threat to the pest, but I was content to spend a large part of that autumn holding my love in a manly embrace as for once we enjoyed some quiet time. 

It could not last, but what did bring it to an end was somewhat surprising. 

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In my first set of extra stories way back in 1921 I mentioned that as well as the three places in which Sherlock and I had lived together – Montague Street, Cramer Street and of course our beloved Baker Street – one of our cases was solved just prior to my decamping to Egypt in 'Eighty-Three, when I had had lodgings in Dorset Street while poor Sherlock had had to move back in with his family for a time (I still recall the epic eye-roll!). As I had explained at the time I did not count Dorset Street as one of 'our homes' because only I lived there even if Sherlock was often round, and besides our one published case from there had to be 'moved' to Baker Street because I wished to spare Mrs. York who had owned the house from any publicity. There were of course all sorts of places at which we stayed briefly to solve individual cases but there was also this one case where we resided elsewhere for a whole two months during one of the most bizarre set of events that the two of us have ever come across. Even reading of the events which I know happened during that fateful (and nearly fatal) year of 'Ninety-Nine I still find them hard to believe. 

Our temporary departure from Baker Street came about courtesy of the Metropolitan Railway Company which ran its trains through Baker Street Station and along the tracks than ran behind the houses across the road from us. The next station north, St. John's Wood Road, was close to the famous Lord's cricket ground (in recent times it has been renamed 'St. John's Wood'†) and about the only times that we really noticed the railway's existence was during major cricket matches when the number of trains would increase notably; not so much for the trains themselves which from our forward rooms in the house we could not hear but for the increased road traffic along the street to and from the tube station. 

Unfortunately on this particular Guy Fawkes's Night, one of the Metropolitan Railway's trains suffered a derailment at the point just before the tracks entered the tunnel under the Park. I am only grateful that by the grace of God there were no fatalities even if there were many minor injuries, but that accident would turn out to have repercussions for Sherlock and myself, for the site of the derailment could only be accessed through an alleyway that, by some cruel mischance, lay almost directly opposite our own rooms in 221B. How those workers managed to make so much more noise than an electric railway train I do not know but living in the house rapidly became intolerable. So when Sherlock received a request some two days after they had started to go and investigate a case far out into the country, it seemed like Providence.

One of these days.... one of these days, I _would_ learn!

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I cannot reveal the exact location of our destination for reasons that I shall explain later, but I will say that we took the Great Northern Railway out of King's Cross Station, changing to the North Eastern at Doncaster. We alighted at Durham Station and it took two more trains and a horse ride to reach our destination which, apparently, was..... a wood.

“Magdon Wood”, Sherlock said as if taking one's lover out into the middle of absolutely nowhere was normal. I looked at the frankly forbidding dense woodland in front of me and the thought, quite unbidden, rose in me that he could bury my body out here and no-one would ever find me.

I should have mentioned that it was quite cold. That was why I was shivering.

“I can think of much better things to do with your body, John!” he growled, showing that he still had that uncanny (and irritating) ability to read my mind. “A Mr. George Lucas requires our attendance in order to, and I quote, 'avert the end of days'.”

I blinked. Sherlock had been called upon to do many difficult things in his life but stopping an apocalypse seemed a bit much even for him, although I would not have put it past the bacon-stealing rogue. Also, why were we visiting someone in the middle of a wood?

The answer along with why we were on horses rather than in a carriage, came when Sherlock had led me some way into the dark little wood. Although it was still mid-afternoon and a couple of hours until sunset the trees overhead blocked out most of the light and I shivered uncomfortably. It was cold, dark, and the animal noises seemed..... what on earth was _that?_

Right in the middle of the wood someone had built a large concrete and indubitably ugly building. The trees still pressed round it but I could see that the large, squat single-story structure had a domed glass roof in its centre. _Where on earth had Sherlock brought me?_

“Remember the year?”

The fact that he had somehow got himself and his horse right next to me had escaped my notice and I may just possibly have uttered a noise which some uncharitable observer – especially one with blue eyes and absolutely no consideration for his elders and betters – may have later called a girly shriek (judging from the smirk on said someone's face I probably had). I glared at him.

“What do you mean, the year?” I asked once I had recovered my breath and my heart-rate was mostly back to normal.

“We are less than two months away from the year 1900”, he reminded me. “Some people, especially given the instability in the world just now, believe that we are approaching the End Of Days.”

I scoffed at that.

“I remember reading that once about the Dark Ages”, I said. “All those people who thought that once the years reached four figures the world would end, a sort of millennium bug, then time would somehow run out at the end of the year 1000. I would wager that they all kept very quiet when 1001 rolled around bang on time!”

“The glut of Viking raids in those dark times was far from nothing”, he countered smoothly. “Our client Mr. Lucas is one such who believes that to quote from his letter 'the world will be swept clean by the wings of the Millennium Falcon'.”

I stared at him.

“I can see one reason why you needed me along, then”, I said acidly. “Has he been taking the right tablets?” 

“Hence why he has paid to build this place”, Sherlock said with a smile, “where he believes that he will be safe from the winged terror set to fall upon Mankind. By the greatest good fortune he is prepared to host us here for the month or more that it will take those workmen to either finish their repairs across from 221B, or to sufficiently annoy Mrs. Malone that she starts using them for target practice for her pistol. More likely the latter I suspect.”

I smiled at that image but I could only imagine that we were going to spend a very uncomfortable time in this tiny little place.

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I could not have been more wrong (yes, even for me, shut up!). The single-storey building that was above ground was merely the top-most part of a massive complex which seemed to go on forever. It was like a large country hotel had been built into the ground with only a small roof-section poking up into the wood. 

Our host (and the place was so large I would not have been surprised had it taken several days for him to find us) was as Sherlock had said Mr. George Lucas. He was one of those small nervous fellows who I could imagine easily ending up as a hen-pecked husband doing everything that his wife told him to.....

I could almost _hear_ the smirk from someone in the vicinity who was not getting laid – or doing any laying – any time in the near future. Bastard!

One curious thing about Mr. Lucas, apart from the not insignificant detail that he lived in a giant hole in the ground, was that he was an American. He told us several times (and only years of dealing with difficult patients enabled me to keep a straight face) that 'the great Millennium Falcon would soar down from the skies and sweep the earth clean'. This, he said, was due to the assassination two millennia ago of Queen Cleopatra the Third of Egypt who had been murdered by her own son King Ptolemy the Tenth and, in her dying breath, had invoked a terrible curse on all Mankind. I wondered why the dear old queen had decided a) not to just zap her killer rather than everyone around centuries later, and b) to give us two thousand years to make the current mess of things, but I was too polite to comment. 

I still got a sharp look from 'someone', though!

Our host had been alerted to the forthcoming apocalypse by a seer in his homeland (I generously forbore from asking if the seer had seen him coming and of course earned myself another warning glare from the resident mind-reader in the vicinity!) who had explained that only those beneath the ground would be spared. Mr. Lucas had therefore used his not inconsiderable wealth to come to England and build this place where he would wait out the End Of Days. I did wonder why he had not had the place built in the United States but he explained that the seer had already built his own shelter there – which I was unsurprised to learn Mr. Lucas had paid for the expansion of – and that the terrible Millennium Falcon would be angered if there was more than one such place per continent. I wondered as to precisely which Caribbean island that seer was currently sunning himself on, having doubtless sold his underground retreat for a handsome profit.

Sherlock was shaking his head at me again! Harrumph!

Our host further explained that his current fears concerned his family and in particular his wife. Incredibly the building of this place had made barely a dent in his huge wealth but Mrs. Lucas, who had refused to leave her homeland, was more than a little annoyed that he was being 'unreasonable' (I admired the lady's reticence; frankly I would have used a less polite and shorter word). Because the oldest of their children was but ten years of age she would by the laws of her homeland be able to assume control of the estate in their name 'if anything happened to her husband'. Oh, and by one of those wonderful coincidences which always seemed to bedevil our cases, she was an excellent shot.

I wondered if the Fates did this sort of thing deliberately.

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One of my favourite parts of this hole in the ground was the electrical warning systems that our host had had installed. The place was divided into sixteen sub-sections and if anyone entered one of them then a red light would flash on and off in all the rooms in it. This was a lucky precaution as it meant that even had our host wandered into Section Twelve where we were staying we would have had enough warning of his approach to make ourselves decent. Or at least I would; Sherlock always looked irritatingly unruffled after I had thrown everything that I had into rocking his world, damn the fellow!

“I contacted Luke before we left”, he told me as we lay together the morning after our arrival. “He is still checking out our host's story but so far what he told us is true. Mrs. Lucas is, to put it politely, a trifle unbalanced.....”

“I suspect it is less trifle and more nutty as a fruit-cake!” I cut in. He smiled.

“More worryingly she has recently moved to a place called Gloucester, not far from the port of Boston”, he said, “where she is but a ship's journey away from England – and her errant husband.”

“What is this lady's name?” I asked. 

“Carrie”, he said, “but in line with his apocalyptic predictions her husband insists on calling her 'Leia'. He believes that after the Falcon has brought about the End Times, he himself will be known as 'Han-who-walks-solo'.”

“I still think he needs to change his tablets!” I said shortly.

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It was actually quite nice living in the bunker for a change although I doubted that I would have wished to live there permanently. Mr. Lucas had employed a local company to deliver food and other essentials to a cottage that stood on the nearest road, over half a mile away so there were frequent supplies of coffee and bacon or life would have been intolerable around 'someone'. I wondered how if our host was so afraid of either his wife or this damn bird he was getting the supplies from the cottage, but it turned out that his servants lived in the place and that it had an underground connection to the bunker. The servants all had cards which enabled them to gain access to various parts of the complex to clean it (though thankfully always at the same time every day) and there was some sort of code system on the doors to stop anyone else from getting in. I also discovered that what I had thought was a chimney at the back was in fact a small observational post which enabled our host to view all the deliveries to the cottage, and actually reached all the way up to above the canopy so that he could see for miles around.

We were living with a madman, but at least it was comfortable.

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Our quiet times came to an end just before the last day of the month when amongst the groceries there was a telegram from Mr. Garrick, who had been looking into matters for us. He told us that the previous week, Mrs. Lucas had gone to Boston and boarded a ship for England. Also, before leaving she had purchased a brand-new top-quality revolver. 

Mr. Lucas nearly threw a fit.

“Calm down, sir!” Sherlock said firmly, if a little grumpily. The delivery that morning had not included his coffee and while there was plenty left in the bunker – the food supplies here would have lasted for several years at a stretch but it was our bad luck that our host preferred tea – he had been annoyed, to which fact my sore backside still attested. “The lady is hardly likely to be able to get past the first line of your defences in this stronghold.”

“You do not know Leia!” he moaned (I rolled my eyes at the awful name; what sort of lady would ever want to be called _that?)_. “She will find a way! The woman is unstoppable. That is it; I am sealing the doors and never going out again!”

I should have mentioned that our host had a dog, a large hearth-rug of indefinite breeding that he called Chewbacca (I so did not ask). He usually walked the beast to the nearby village where there was a post-office which I supposed was necessary as he needed to maintain some contact with the outside world to manage his affairs. Sherlock and I had gone down to the village the week before and had found it frankly uninspiring. Talk about the back end of civilization; the bakery there did not even sell chocolate slices!

“My cousin will have people watching your wife from the moment that she makes landfall in this country”, Sherlock reassured our host, smiling slightly at me for some reason. “Your wife will not be able to do anything without his knowledge.”

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Unfortunately it seemed that for once Sherlock had overestimated Mr. Garrick's capabilities; either that or the insatiable Mr. Jackson-Giles had finally broken him which was all too likely, the dog! Mrs. Lucas had arrived to the port of Plymouth and took the express to London closely followed by Mr. Garrick and one of his agents. However she managed to give them the slip by the clever ruse of choosing a compartment where there was a lady of similar appearance to herself, then persuading the other lady that she was desperate to shake off the pursuit of a violent husband bitter at her contesting their divorce. The other lady had agreed to exchange coats then to alight at Exeter, hurry into the town and book herself into a hotel in Mrs. Lucas's name for the night before resuming her journey the following day. By the time that the deception had been spotted, our host's wife had vanished.

Mr. Lucas unsurprisingly went off again.

“It is just as Obi predicted!” he moaned when told what had happened.

“Obi who?” I asked.

“Obi-one-who-knows-thee”, he said bitterly. “My seer's father. He said that the Millennium Falcon would bring destruction in its wake, and that Luke-who-walks-the-sky would not be able to save me! That must be your cousin, Mr. Holmes. I am doomed, quite doomed!”

Years of dealing with 'difficult' patients still stood me in good stead, but even so my eyes watered with the effort of not laughing. I could almost feel Sherlock wanting to roll his eyes at the 'man' before us.

“I am sure that Luke-who.... my cousin will be able to find her soon enough”, he said. “Since she has gone all the way to London that implies that she does not know where you are.”

“Sir?” Our host was confused which, I guessed, had been Sherlock's intention. At least it had stopped his ravings.

“Had she known of this place, she could have considerably foreshortened her journey by taking a ship to Liverpool”, Sherlock pointed out. “There is a direct service connecting it to Boston rather than the route that she took, which was slower as it included a call at Queenstown over in Ireland. We will find her and you will get justice in this matter, sir.”

An odd choice of words I thought at the time, but as it turned out more than appropriate.

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Sherlock was right in as much that Mrs. Lucas was soon located in London. She was followed down to Queenborough in Kent, opposite Port Victoria where we had solved the 'Baron Maupertuis' case thirteen _(thirteen!)_ years back and from there she took the ferry across to Flushing on the Continent. It seemed that she was on totally the wrong trail – until she promptly doubled back and re-crossed the North Sea to arrive in Kingston-upon-Hull, less than a hundred miles from where we were. Even my friend's infinite patience I could see was being stretched by our blabbering host's near-constant panic attacks.

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It was by this time nearly Christmas, which irked me somewhat as I was used to making the festive season by decorating our Baker Street rooms. Large as the bunker was, it was completely sterile with all the rooms painted in a uniform pale cream colour, and I suspected that even a single sprig of holly would have stood out like a sore thumb. Besides, a religious maniac like Mr. Lucas was not likely to mark a Christian holiday. Since Sherlock and I had not expected to be away for so long we had left our presents for each other back in Baker Street so we did not even have those. The great day would, I thought, be a quiet one.

I was to be proven very wrong. A telegram arrived for Sherlock on the Lord's birthday and he frowned as he read it. We both watched him anxiously.

“It seems that your troubles are over, sir”, he said heavily. “The lady being followed by my cousin's agents was tracked to a hotel in the city of Durham yesterday and was seen making inquiries as to whether you had been in the area.”

I shuddered. We were some distance from the great city on the Wear, but Mrs. Lucas seemed to be getting ever closer.

“However”, Sherlock went on, “it chanced that she then approached one of the agents following her. There was a confrontation and she took out her gun. My cousin was standing some little distance away and was forced to shoot, purely in self-defence I should add.” He paused before adding, “I am sorry to inform you that your wife is now dead.”

The man had turned ashen-faced and he swallowed several times, unable to speak.

“I wish that I did not have to add to your worries”, Sherlock said in the sort of voice I had far too often used to patients myself and which I knew meant 'I am just about to', “but it is essential that the body be formally identified. Since you are the only one who can do that.....”

“Yes”, our host gulped. “I... suppose that I have to.”

“Then it will all be over”, Sherlock said soothingly.

He shot me a look when I was but half-way through thinking 'what about that bloody bird and the End of Days?' which was damnably unfair. The mind-reading thing should not have worked underground!

_Because!_

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It was two days later and the three of us had travelled to the city of Durham. Mr. Lucas seemed even smaller, curled up on his side of the compartment while Sherlock and I were silent. Once at the police-station where the body had been taken I expected Sherlock to let our host go in and do his duty alone but to my surprise he remained with him, dragging me along as well. The police doctor nodded to us and drew back the white cloth covering the body. 

The next few seconds seemed to take an eternity. Mr. Lucas gasped in horror, actually screamed and tried to back away, but only succeeded into running into the wall of solid muscle that was Sherlock. The sound of his scream was still reverberating when the white-faced woman on the table suddenly opened her eyes and slowly sat up and looked at our client.

And smiled evilly.

“Hullo, Perkie!” she cackled.

Mr. Lucas fainted.

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As our host came round he blinked confusedly at us then tried to sit upright on the bed on which he had been placed, only to realize that he had been handcuffed. Also that he was in a prison cell. His confusion very quickly turned to anger.

“Mr. Holmes!” he snapped. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Perkins”, Sherlock said calmly.

The fellow's pause was a fraction of a second too long.

“Who is that?” the fellow demanded.

“You are”, Sherlock said dryly. “Kindly note that you are under arrest for the murder of your wife, done to death some months ago by you, sir, and entombed in the underground bunker of your associate Mr. Wade Darlington-Atherstone. Or as you prefer to call him, 'Darth'.”

I stared at Sherlock in confusion.

“But who was the dead – I mean the not dead lady?” I asked. 

Sherlock grinned.

“Mr. Perkins here had decided some time ago to rid himself of his wife”, he said. “However the United States has like our own Nation progressed to the point where divorce is no longer that easy for gentlemen, and they must expect to actually pay a part of their wealth to fulfil their obligations. Despite his immense wealth Mr. Perkins was not minded to pay, so he murdered his wife.”

He sounded so matter-of-fact about it that I winced.

“An associate disguised himself as a seer who seemingly convinced Mr. Perkins to flee the country, and to build a huge bunker complex to wait out the end of the world”, Sherlock said. “In fact the whole thing was a ruse to cover the removal of his wife. I suspected as much early on, sir, and once it was reported that a lady was on her way here I telegraphed the American police to search Mr. Darlington-Atherstone's own bunker. They found your wife's body almost immediately.”

The man behind the bars snarled at him. I found it hard to believe that the timorous inconsequential man who had been skulking underground all this time was a killer.

“Mr. Darlington-Atherstone had cajoled a lady into playing the part of your wife and coming to England”, Sherlock said, “at which event you of course would grow even more afraid of 'your wife'. The poor girl involved was destined to be murdered by your accomplice so that she would become the victim who you would later identify as 'Mrs. Lucas'. Much later, when the Millennium Falcon had for some reason decided not to end the world after all, you would have returned shame-faced to the United States. And to your wealth.”

“My cousin allowed Mr. Darlington-Atherstone and his lady, an actress called Miss Artuditu, to get only as far as Plymouth before having him arrested and transported back to face justice in his homeland”, he went on calmly. “The lady, who was only employed to be a fake Mrs. Lucas and was not in on the whole ramp, was allowed to return home. The telegram from Durham was a fake and my brother's man employed the services of a most excellent Italian actress, a Miss Corinne Thripio, who was made up as your dead wife. I decided that you deserved some initial punishment before returning to face justice in your homeland.”

Mr. Perkins surprised me at that point by uttering a string of quite inventive obscenities that I will not repeat here, and we could still hear his screaming as we left to collect our things from his bunker.

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The reader will not be surprised to learn that, contrary to all those predictions, the Millennium Falcon did _not_ swoop down and bring an end to the world that New Year's Eve. Sherlock and I returned to a restored 221B that same day and were able to celebrate a belated Christmas. He gave me a wonderful complete set of Shakespeare's works, something that I had always wanted. My present to him was a little unusual in that it was something for me to wear. A slave-girl costume.

All things considered I suppose that the world could have ended that year. I was so blissed out that I doubt that I would have even noticed.

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Postscriptum: As an American citizen Mr. Perkins was returned to his homeland, where he paid a fitting penalty for his actions. His bunker here was eventually acquired by the British government, for reasons I knew not. Sherlock advised me against revealing the exact location on the grounds of national security, but I believe that he kept a weather eye on affairs to make sure that this latest waste of taxpayers' money was not used for any dark purpose. After all, we both knew from long and bitter experience that governments were only trustworthy on days with an 'x' in them.

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_Notes:_  
_† Renamed again as Lord's Station in June 1939 only to be closed five months later. It and Marlborough Road Station to the north were replaced by the current St. John's Wood Station which lay between them._

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	4. Interlude: Cricket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1899\. All is not what it seems at a school careers day – but some things are still best not inquired into.

_[Narration by Master Benjamin Jackson-Giles II]_

Whatever they say about teenagers these days, we have nothing on the elder generation some of whom are a complete embarrassment. I suppose that I should be thankful as my father was..... well-connected but even so...... I mean, he was my father! And worst of all Billy, my immediate younger brother and a right smart-arse of a know-all, had been smirking when I had told him about it afterwards such that I'd left him and come home alone.

Thankfully Mother was out at her cleaning-job – I know, not pregnant for once; contact the 'Times'! – so Father was alone when I came in from school. I looked sharply at the grinning reprobate; we may have been physically similar but I was old enough to know things I really wished I didn't.

“How did careers day go, Ben?” he asked with an innocence I did not believe for a minute.

“I approached the Oxford desk about becoming a teacher”, I said, staring hard at him. “They said that scholarships are rare these days but there was one for a London student of exceptional talent starting next year, if I was prepared to spend five years doing it. They looked at my scores and put me down for it.”

“That's good, son”, he smiled. “Hard work pays off, eh?”

The bastard did not even have the decency to look guilty, damn him! _How_ were we related?

Unfortunately in my callow ignorance I went and asked the worst possible question.

“What did you do to get Mr. Holmes to pay for it?” I sighed.

He snickered at me.

“Cricket”, he said.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“I agreed to bat for once, rather than bowl.”

I enjoyed a few brief blissful seconds of ignorance before I got his meaning. _I was horrified!_

"And I wore the whites while we....."

“Ugh! Father!”

“Not to worry”, he said brightly. “He has a whole week off to recover, and I made sure he laid in plenty of that special unguent.....”

I fled to my room in horror. Parents! Why did the Good Lord arrange things so that my own Father...... and now I had that image in my mind.

I hid under my pillow and cried. I would never ever play cricket again because..... ugh!

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My own damn good nature somehow contrived to make a bad situation worse, and the next day I went round to Mr. Garrick to say thank you (I had first made sure that Father was safely at work). The state of him – and to cap it all there was a cricket bat in the hallway which he saw me looking at and went bright red.

Thank the Lord that my generation will make a better job of running things when we take over!

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End file.
